Conversations For Transformation:
Essays Inspired By The Ideas Of Werner Erhard

Conversations For Transformation

Essays By Laurence Platt

Inspired By The Ideas Of Werner Erhard

And More

The Virtue Of Indifference

Sonoma, California, USA

January 10, 2008

This essay,
The Virtue Of Indifference,
was written at the same time as
Perspective.

I am indebted to Karen Donovan and to Larry Pearson who inspired this
conversation.

The difficulty I
anticipate
when I speak the virtue of indifference is people will
instead hear me say I don't care.

When I wake up early in the morning, I'm at a fork in the road with two
distinctions:

the day I wake up into;

the day I could create like a possibility.

The day I wake up into doesn't guarantee I'll create anything. The day
I wake up into doesn't necessarily come with productivity, with
alacrity, with velocity, with feeling good (nor, for that matter, does
it come with feeling bad) ... AND ... it may randomly come
with one or more of those qualities. It simply comes with whatever
it comes with.

The day I could create like a possibility isn't assured just because
I wake up. When I don't create the day, the day I could create like
a possibility merely defaults to the day I wake up into.

If I tell the truth about it, when I wake up I don't always
want to create the day. When I wake up, creating the day
often sounds like and feels like
too muchhard work. Often the first thing the day I wake up into tells me
is staying in bed a little longer is what's wanted and
needed. Unconsciousness calls. Often the first thing the day I wake up
into tells me is I did more than my quota yesterday so I
can afford a break today. Slothfulness reasons. And that's only for
starters in productivity for the day I wake up into.

I'm indifferent to the day I wake up into.

Transformation doesn't show up in the day I wake up into.
Transformation only shows up in the day I create like a
possibility. Just because I created a day like a possibility
yesterday and transformation showed up, that doesn't promise
transformation will show up in the day I wake up into today. There's
no transformation you
get once, then keep
forever.
Transformation shows up when I create the day like a possibility newly
- every day, day after day, after day after day after day. If I don't
create the day like a possibility newly, there's no
transformation ie I'm not transformed.

I've come not to place stock in solving problems. Rather,
transform the context in which problems show up as
problems. To do that, I've become indifferent to problems
per se. They're always there. They always will be. They go with
the territory of being human. They come with the day I wake up into.
But they're transformed, they're
recontextualized
by the day I create like a possibility.

Indifference is a virtue when it's dispassionate. It's really a
stand for what's possible as opposed to what's already
always there.